A Near Disaster

(Typing is still a little painful, so I'm sharing a story I wrote long ago and decided not to post. In other words, a reject. My apologies, I'll try to do better next time.)

A few years ago, we had an odd experience while visiting my wife’s sister in Pennsylvania. My in-laws were there for an extended visit. The sister had asked my wife to send the parents $1,000—but to make the check out to her (and of course she wouldn’t let my wife talk with her parents to confirm the need). We decided to visit them.

When we arrived, we entered through their garage and I could see a reflection of their fireplace in one of the prints hanging in their hallway. It was fall and a great day for a fire. Before long my wife went off to the other end of the house to play with one of the nieces—the other niece was at a friend’s house—and I stayed in the kitchen making small talk with the adults. Our hostess settled in at her kitchen table with her back to the garage door and her hubby was in and out. I wasn’t sure what he was doing.

As we talked, I noticed a reflection of fire again in the print on the wall. But the fireplace was behind me. I was facing the garage. How could I see a reflection of the fireplace? I quickly realized there had to be a fire in the garage! As I thought that (but before I said it), my brother-in-law looked at me and asked, “What? Is it a fire?” We started running towards the garage, but he turned left and went out the back door. A 3rd sister’s BF and I went into the garage and found a fire burning in the middle of what appeared to be a homemade fort.

The brother-in-law had put fireplace ashes in a paper bag, in a cardboard box, in a wooden box (all open on the top). There was a 5 gallon gas can right next to it on one side and a can of paint thinner on the other. All of that was surrounded by 4 bicycles, an old coffee table, golf clubs and assorted junk. I cleared a path and we got to the potential explosives before the fire did. Then we cleared everything else away from the fire and it burned harmlessly. A few minutes later the brother-in-law came running in with a shovel in his hands—he said he thought we might need it. Good thing we didn’t.

My wife thinks the brother-in-law was actually trying to knock off his wife in a “tragic” explosion. The 3rd sister thinks the engineer-turned-salesman is simply a moron. I lean towards him being an idiot, but I’m not sure. I wonder how he knew I was going to say there was a fire. I wonder why he put hot ashes in the garage (in paper and cardboard) when he normally put them in a metal container in the back yard. I wonder why junk (and explosive material) was completely surrounding the ashes/fire. I wonder why it took him so long to get the shovel.

What do you think? Was it stupidity or a poorly planned attempt to knock off his wife? Within two months he left her to go live with his girl friend (whose much older, wealthy husband had just had a major stroke and was completely dependent on her—she stuck him in a home, divorced him, and took half his fortune).


PS – My father-in-law said he didn’t need any money.